2023 Author: Katelyn Chandter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 13:08
Male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV, cancer, syphilis, and chlomidiosis. Is it time to reconsider his merits?
If there was a cheap and safe way that would significantly and for the whole life protect your newborn son from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as from cancer and many bad infections at one time, would you choose it for your son? Then, here's a way for you. It is called the procedure for circumcision in infants.
According to the results of studies carried out over the past 10 years, circumcision of the foreskin reduces the risk of HIV infection by 50%, reduces the risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in partners of circumcised men (HPV can cause uterine cancer) by 50%, and also reduces the risk of syphilis and chlomidiosis, a disease leading to infertility and the most common among adolescents. Also, the procedure reduces the risk of urinary tract infection and the associated increase in temperature by 10 times. In addition, circumcision eliminates the risk of cancer of the urinary system, which affects one in every 100,000 uncircumcised men.
Evidence from Africa on the potential role of circumcision in AIDS prevention prompted the New York City Department of Health to begin discussions on initiating a circumcision program for gay and drug addicts.
My unscientific thoughts in defense of circumcision
I did not know any of the above in 1996, when my son Aleksey was born, but I was quite sure that my sons should not wear a leather hood on their pepper. But since my wife is not Jewish, the issue was not resolved without heated debates.
The respected Russian family of my wife, may God bless them, was actively against the suffering that temper the spirit, whether according to the Bible or not. My wife's sister and our family doctor, who are very knowledgeable in the medical (and other) fields, believed that circumcision was unnecessary. My wife Maria didn't want to hurt her first child.
Circumcision scene. Depiction on an Egyptian tomb (c. 2500 BC)
I was as tough as a rock. Lesha went to the operating table. For the cultured, non-believing Jew that I am, circumcision was the only way to tribally unite with a son. Sounds primitive? Actually, yes.
When the time came, Masha, wiping away her tears, left the operating room. Dr. Blank, our doctor and rebe, pulled back the foreskin with a clamp and deftly cut it off like a man trimming a good Cuban cigar. Lesha screamed, waved his hands, and after 5 seconds he was snoring peacefully in his sleep. That's all.
The ancient Egyptians were the first to circumcise, as sand getting under the foreskin caused itching and infection. Jews and Muslims adopted this practice from them more as a ritual, and a hundred years ago it spread throughout the world for other reasons, the reformers believed that it prevents masturbation.
Over the past several decades, circumcision has come under increasing scrutiny due to the obvious pain of the procedure and what some have come to call it a form of mutilation. Since the beginning of the era of Dr. Spock, when people began to think about reducing pain in children, circumcision began to be presented as a useless bloody ritual, like the images on the Mayan temple. Dozens of fanatical anti-circumcision websites circulated slogans like, "Bring your whole son home!"
Oddly enough, opponents of non-suffering circumcision have garnered scientific support for how much suffering the procedure inflicts on a child.
It is unlikely that my son lost anything more as a result of surgery (one study in 1997 cited a relationship between circumcision and subsequent fear of vaccination) than a couple of grams of saggy skin. As far as I remember, Dr. Blank did not even use anesthesia, which has since become the norm. With anesthesia, this procedure became completely painless.
“In the past, babies used to scream shortly,” says Edgar Schoen, MD, an avid circumcision advocate who spent 24 years as head of the pediatrics department at the Kaiser Health Center. "They are now asleep during the procedure."
Does circumcision affect the degree of sexual pleasure?
Some opponents of circumcision argue that it reduces sexual pleasure. This is difficult to refute, since a circumcised boy is unlikely to say how he would feel if he had a foreskin. But this is hardly true. Don't 2/3 of us enjoy sex? I think no. Observations of men who were circumcised as adults do not indicate any difference in their sex lives.
In recent years, fewer and fewer parents in the United States have circumcised their children. In 16 states, health insurance does not cover circumcision, and the most recent federal data show that the number of babies circumcised dropped from 65% to 55% between 1993 and 2003. Schoen argues that these figures are based on incomplete hospital reports of circumcisions.
Lack of health insurance to cover circumcision and other negative opinions about circumcision plays into the hands of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which in 1999 expressed its attitude to circumcision in this way: despite the "potential medical benefits", there is not enough evidence to recommend a procedure as compulsory for newborns”.
Circumcision and HIV
Schoen and other doctors such as Daniel Halperin, Harvard medical anthropologist, Ph. D., argue that strong evidence that circumcision prevents HIV dates back to the late 1980s. But the medical community is still skeptical about them. More compelling research has emerged since the AARP's announcement.
Earlier this year, three circumcision experiments involving randomly selected men from Kenya and Uganda were halted when it became clear that circumcision was inhibiting the spread of HIV. Men who went through this procedure had every chance of getting infected. “The result is a 50% reduction in the incidence rate, almost the same as some vaccines,” says Schoen. The final evidence came in March this year, when the UN World Health Organization announced that male circumcision should be included in the list of measures designed to stop the spread of the disease.
It turned out that circumcision can fight AIDS due to the fact that the foreskin of the penis is especially sensitive to HIV. Cracks or scratches often form on it, through which the virus can enter. And diseases such as syphilis or chancroid, which are more common in uncircumcised men, are fertile ground for HIV.
Is circumcision dangerous? Not good
There are, of course, some risks to circumcision. One in a hundred babies will bleed or have an infection, but this is easily treated. Serious mistakes, such as cutting off the shaft of the penis, are very rare, with deaths occurring in 1 in 500 thousand cases, which makes this operation the safest.
However, opponents of circumcision can be easily found. Their arguments against circumcision span a wide range “from psychology and religion to emotional reasoning,” Schoen says. He receives death threats from anti-circumcision groups, and his lectures on circumcision are often picketed.
About 7% of men who did not undergo circumcision in childhood are forced to resort to it as adults due to infections or painful fusion of the foreskin with the head of the penis.
As the saying goes, the choice is yours.
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